Read the Bible 2017

It’s 2017 and as a member of First Love Church, it’s our year of greatness, so I want to attempt great things for God (more on that later). So I have set myself a great task for 2017. (Well I have in theory but I set my target quite low because I actually want to achieve it and by the grace of God obliterate it.)

So for this year I have set myself the rather achievable target (it’s easy to say this at the point where I’ve barely just started) of reading at least one chapter from every single book within the bible by the end of the year. That is a total of 66 chapters over 365 days. That shouldn’t be too difficult as that works out to be roughly 1 chapter every 5 and a half days. However, to achieve this I have set myself a slightly more difficult challenge. I’ve decide to use Professor Horner’s Bible Reading Plan.

Professor Horner’s Bible reading plan is designed to be an intense journey into reading the whole of the Bible.

How does it work?

Each day you read one chapter from ten lists. What do you mean?

Well here are the ten lists (and how long it takes to get through them):

Acts (28 days)

On day one, you start by reading Matthew 1, Genesis 1, Romans 1, etc. On day 2, you read Matthew 2, Genesis 2, etc. On day 29, you will have just finished Matthew, so you go to Mark 1 on list one (the gospels); you’ll also be almost at the end of 2nd Corinthians in list three and Proverbs in list seven. If you’ve been doing it correctly you should also be reading Psalm 29 in list six and Genesis 29 in list two… I hope you’re getting the idea, then when you reach the last chapter of the last book in a list you basically start over again.

As each of the lists vary in length, you will probably never end up reading the same set of ten chapters together again! By the end of the year (if you keep it up every day) you’ll have read through all the Gospels four times, the Pentateuch (that’s the first five books of the bible) twice, Paul’s letters at least 4 times each, the Old Testament wisdom literature six times, all the Psalms at least twice, all the Proverbs as well as Acts a dozen (that’s 12) times, and all the way through the Old Testament History and Prophetic books about 1½ times.

So… how am I finding it so far?

Well, this is day seven for me and I can assure you that it hasn’t been easy so far. By the grace this gets easier as I continue to read the bible more often. What I can say is what helps is I find some parts of the bible more stimulating to read than others, but this method helps to break up some of the more long-winded sections of the Bible for example Matthew chapter 1 aka the geneology of Jesus.

As much of a nice idea as it sounded in my head when I was planning to start this reading plan, it’s not practical to attempt to try to have a full quiet time based on all ten chapters. I mean, it’s taking me roughly an hour to read all ten of my chapters each day so it would probably require me to use 10 hours a day to write anything meaningful about all 10 chapters and unfortunately I don’t have a spare 10 hours every day.

What I will do though to retain some of what I read is take some notes regarding at least one of my 10 chapters. Then I’ll try to share at least one of those chapters with you each week (maybe more if you’re lucky).

Until the next time may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you!